Sunday at School
by Qwisse
Summary: He has grown to love Sundays. The days when it was quiet in the morning; the days when he could pretend nothing was wrong with the world.


Written for the Kelviniana forum Back to School challenge.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the characters and locales. SEGA does.

**Edit 27-04-2013**: Fixed the typos Lord Kelvin and BAA mentioned. Thanks!

* * *

.w.

Sun was shining brightly through the windows of Central City's Third Middle School. Nobody had bothered to do any cleaning for the past two days, and now tiny specs of dust were dancing in the light, putting everyone who tried to look at them for long in a sort of sleepy trance.

The school was supposed to be closed at Sundays, as if there were some keen students who could actually come and steal a portion of knowledge they weren't supposed to on such a free day. It didn't stop a certain hedgehog from finding a seat at the desk near the sunlit window in the passage on the third floor, and placing a messy pile of books in front of him.

Save for a quiet mumbling coming from the nearest locked classroom, the world around was still and tranquil. Even usual sounds of a traffic jam and kids playing nearby weren't coming from the outside, despite the building being located in a busy district. Perhaps there was an open window somewhere close, so slight gusts of fresh wind breezed through the warm air from time to time.

A perfect day for reading, Shadow thought leisurely while turning the page. A big part of his book still remained unexplored, as did those lying on the desk.

"How was your last mission, Rouge?" he asked casually.

The bat girl sat on the window sill next to him, her legs dangling in the air lazily. School rules forbad such behavior, but since when did Rouge care about any rules? She looked a tad more relaxed than her usual self today, her make-up being relatively moderate – unlike her usual attire. _"Boring. Had to take some papers to a secret office. You know, I even start to miss good ol' doctor – with him being so quiet, I get a lot less jewels for my work than before."_

He hummed. That bat's addictions were hopelessly incurable. "Does it mean the President's agency and G.U.N. stopped fighting at last?"

_"Sort of. We aren't exactly friends as of now, but the two organizations are looking for ways to start working together by the time Eggman returns."_

Something prickled Shadow's heart slightly; whatever it was, it was gone moments later. "Good. We are safe for now."

A girl sitting across the desk smiled at him sheepishly. Her blue dress and long blond hair glistened slightly in the sunshine. There was a book in front of her, too; poetry. She wasn't reading it, though, preferring to watch Shadow instead. He didn't mind and appreciated her silent encouragement.

Had they been alone, he would have asked her to explain a formula in his book he failed to understand. The girl was good at making things simple and easy to comprehend. With Rouge being around, though, he wasn't going to show such weakness.

The teacher in a locked classroom cleared his throat soundly, preparing for another information attack. Shadow couldn't make out whole sentences, but judging from separate words he could pick up, the subject was science.

_"Being an agent must require a lot of knowledge,"_ Maria said quietly.

Rouge hummed. _"Reading a couple of laws to know how many years in jail you would get in case of failure won't hurt. There's more, but you won't learn it all from books."_

A frown appeared on Shadow's face. Knowing Rouge's attitude towards scientists, he expected her to now say something unpleasant about Gerald Robotnik, and he couldn't say he anticipated it.

But she seemed really peaceful today. _"I haven't seen Omega for a while. Is everything alright?"_

He nodded without looking up from the page. "Minor repairs. Yearly routine. He should be ready for action soon."

_"Sweet. I won't bear the look on his face if we beat Eggman once and for all without him."_

She laughed slyly, and even Shadow smiled in the corner of his mouth. Maria remained serious nevertheless; her hedgehog friend knew she did not approve both her cousin's advances and the military's counteractions.

_"I wish I could talk to doctor Eggman,"_ she said quietly. And added, louder this time, _"And Omega, too. You promised to introduce me to him, remember, Shadow?"_

"Of course," he mumbled, feeling slightly uneasy. "I will after the repairs are done, okay?"

There was a sound of footsteps in the classroom next to them, and all three of them tensed, waiting for an angry teacher to appear and shoo them away. Talking outside the classroom during a lesson was always frowned upon. Students were also supposed to read in the library, not a random passage they liked. Shadow broke this rule whenever he could; he felt helpless when facing a huge mass of books, preferring more book-less sunlit corners of the school on a quiet day. Today, he personally moved a desk to the window in a corridor for maximum comfort.

Nobody appeared after all, and they relaxed soon. Sighing, Shadow stared into the book again. To him, those columns of text and formulas looked like an assembly manual for a modern coffee machine written in Hebrew by a Chinese tea gatherer. He let the book slump on the desk and rubbed his forehead tiredly. "It's painful…"

A brief thought about stepping into the room and asking the teacher to help entered his mind – and was kicked out with a frown of denial. The hedgehog couldn't help imagining the man – whom he for some reason believed to have Gerald's appearance, an old white-haired scientist with opaque glasses – knit his brows and shake his head with disappointment.

_Shadow, you should be more attentive. Why weren't you listening?_

Gerald had used to say that often. Having a weak voice, he had gotten a habit to clear his throat a lot, too…

Maria seemed to have heard his thoughts. _"Grandfather gives a lesson today. If you want to ask him something, you can do so after he finishes."_

The hedgehog snorted and took the book again. "Not today, thanks. I'm doing fine by myself so far."

_"You know you shouldn't be afraid of him."_

"I am not. Just don't want to."

Another sound of footsteps resonated through the passage, quicker and louder this time. Moments later, a certain blue hedgehog was standing before their eyes and flashing his trademark grin at them. _"Yo, guys. Having fun?"_

Rouge winked at him, while Maria just smiled kindly. Shadow felt a pang of jealousy; somehow he didn't want his human friend to be around that faker.

"Were until you came," he said in a low voice.

_"Nice to see you, too, Shadow,"_ Sonic beamed. _"What are you doing here anyway? I'd expect to see Tails at school on Sunday, but not you."_

_"Oh, come on. Should everything we do arouse suspicions?"_ said Rouge in her usual half-serious manner. _"Besides, you don't appear a diligent student either, but you are here."_

Unfortunately, the hero had already taken notice of a bunch of books lying in front of his dark counterpart. _"Looking for Tails, told ya. Wow, I never thought you could read, Shadow."_

"You mean you can actually think, faker?"

_"Ha-ha. Good at that, didn't you know? What's the book, by the way? Comics?"_

"Physics." A frown found its way across his face. "Now get lost, I can't concentrate because of you."

_"Wha?"_ The blue brows jerked up. _"C'mon, who do you think's gonna fall for it? Show me!"_

"Don't..!"

Too late. The hero grabbed a book lying idly on the table, and dropped it.

Shadow's hand shot forward to catch it, but the inevitable had already happened. With a loud thump, the book hit the floor, and its pages flew all over the floor.

Silence followed the event.

The dark hedgehog exhaled slowly, aware of how the passage was now quiet, dark, and chilly around him.

"…Damn it."

He stood up and tried to restore the book to its original state. A thick cover was intact, but the pages tore to bits and turned into dust after coming in contact with his fingers. Low-quality paper... old paper. Shadow sighed and got back up from the floor.

"Stupid faker. Even now, he is still an inconvenience."

Without much hope, he looked around. Faker was no longer in sight. The sill was empty, as was the chair across the desk. Gentle sunshine was gone, too, but occasional red flashes were dancing across his muzzle – something was burning in the neighbor district.

Shadow studied the cover he was still holding. It wasn't the book he was reading before Sonic arrived; this one was on history. He took it to read if he felt tired of the formulas.

The cover flew across the desk and hit the wall, forcing a layer of paint to detach from it. Dust waterfalled off the sill from the impact. Shadow returned to his seat, skipped a paragraph and read two more pages; but without him understanding a key formula, the rest simply didn't make sense.

After countless minutes of struggling, he gave up and snapped the volume closed. With some hesitation, he got up and peeked into the room where the mumbling had been coming from. Nobody was inside. Only empty desks, litter on the floor, and shadows.

He took the remaining books with him as he left the school. No person could steal them while he was gone, but fire could.

The lock on the school's front door was long broken.

Dust, sand, and ashes flew up in the air as he glided through the motionless city. Shadow's thoughts soon turned towards the book the faker destroyed. Maybe it covered the way from primitive tools to microcomputers the human technology had made over the centuries; that would actually help him with his learning. Maybe it told a story about dirty games rulers played one after another. The hedgehog didn't have time to look through the book, so he couldn't tell.

Had someone had time to write a book about the events that concluded the Eggman vs. the world drama? Or at least compiled all the newspaper articles that covered them?

Well, he had, but it just so happened he wasn't interested in texts of any kind for the major part of his life. Now all that remained with him was his unreliable, amnesia-prone memory.

…Had he not left Eggman's side during the battle, maybe he could have stabilized the laser pulse weapon when it went haywire. Somehow, probably using his Chaos Emerald.

Had he decided to join the G.U.N. at that time, or the government, or Sonic and his company, or even try and make the three parties stop fighting and work together, maybe he could have retrieved the Master Emerald before Eggman put it to use.

But he preferred to disappear, and the Emerald evaporated after the very first laser shot.

The platform for it was an ARK-styled space station (Sonic and Tails mentioned some Death Egg or something like that when talking about it), and the laser itself was powered by the Emerald the doctor stole from the Angel Island… again. It turned a portion of energy into waves with needed properties like a synthetic ruby would, only it somehow turned out unable to withstand a surge of energy other than the Chaos one.

One laser pulse was all it took to destroy the G.U.N.'s head fortress in the United Federation.

That seemed to be the most drastic aftereffect of the shot at first. Only when Shadow returned, and it took him many months to do so, they started to notice strange things that were happening to people all over the world. Changes in state of health and behavior were at first thought to be the symptoms of some new virus – until someone decided to have a talk about that with a certain echidna.

Knuckles, who seemed to have died on the inside when his Emerald disappeared, said it was inevitable. From what his ancestors knew, the energy known as Chaos energy came from some _another place_ through the Chaos Emeralds – and the echidna's answer to all questions regarding the nature of that place was a mere shrug. To drain the energy back so it didn't accumulate on this planet, there was the Master Emerald. Something that could neutralize all seven energy Servers. In his world, everything had been just that simple until Eggman happened.

The problem with the Chaos energy was that it appeared lethal to humans if applied in large doses. They had gotten used to its natural flow from the regular Emeralds towards the Master one over the centuries, but with the lack of the latter they found themselves sitting in a poisoned pool of hostile energy that grew in size with every passing day. As a year went by, there were the first deaths caused by an unacceptable amount of Chaos in someone's body.

Shadow learned all that while lurking around the capital without attracting much attention. Even if anyone had questions about him working for Eggman the last time, they were wise enough not to bother him.

How could the echidna Guardians survive being so close to the Controller? And how could Sonic survive entering his Super form? Those were the first questions the scientists asked themselves. The hero was surprisingly willing to cooperate with a battalion of government researchers, and Knuckles didn't seem to care. Hasty tests showed that anthropomorphs could absorb the Chaos energy in varying amounts like the ME would, without any damage to their system or even gaining special powers in the meantime. Someone guessed the Chaos energy was the reason why some regular wild animals evolved into talking animals in the first place.

Would have been a huge discovery, had the circumstances been different. Now, the scientists had to think up a way to put their knowledge to use.

Admittedly, one couldn't turn humanity into anthropomorphic animals overnight.

And even said animals couldn't absorb all the energy emitted by the Emeralds, having a personal limit each. A certain hedgehog paid dearly to discover that.

Realizing that, the government and the remnants of the G.U.N.'s top ranks convinced Rouge and Shadow himself to find the remaining five Emeralds – save for the ones he and the military possessed – and bring them to a research center to destroy as well. The idea itself sounded like heresy to the hedgehog, but some bloody pang of bloody guilt forced him to say yes. They were a seasoned treasure hunter and the Ultimate Life Form; they sure could do more than just sympathize, right?

The fact that at least two of the gems were aboard the abandoned Eggman's space craft didn't sound like a good sign.

He returned two weeks later, dropped all the Emeralds, his included, at the research facility, and disappeared again. It was crystal clear that Eggman, having never appeared since the accident, wouldn't be a bother ever again. And nobody dared to ask where Rouge was.

Several social movements against anthropomorphes was the last news he heard before heading as far away from the society as possible.

Apparently, the scientists' idea failed, because he had never met any living humans ever since, unlike the Emeralds. Probably there still were some sapient animals like him, but he wasn't really looking for them.

_Why weren't you listening, Shadow?_

Listening to whom?

He frowned, forcing the Professor out of his head. It's not like he had reasons to feel sorry for the humanity.

Thinking about all that, he finally entered the place he could call his home, for a lack of a better term. A not-too-secret G.U.N. station on the city outskirts in the past, now it still stood strong and could provide him with a roof over his head and the machinery he needed. Having been raised on a space colony, he was used to empty dark passages. Dust wasn't the problem, and he had kicked the skeletons out so he wouldn't stumble accidentally.

His goal lay on the first underground level; a vast area where large battle machines had used to pass various tests. He nodded towards a motionless robot.

"Feeling well, Omega?"

The robot did not respond.

Sighing, Shadow placed his books near the wall and took a seat nearby. With his back against the cold metal, facing his silent comrade, the hedgehog prepared for a rest.

Omega. The only sapient being he could find after returning to Central City. Something that now rested in a circle made of seven Chaos Emeralds, partially disassembled, no more functioning.

Recovery Mode was an ability the most advanced Eggman's robots were lucky to get. A power to self-recover from non-heavy physical damage, as well as withstand the natural wear-out any machine was bound to face. The initial chance of failure was 0.01; the number grew by seven percent every year, or faster if a robot suffered an attack.

It took Recovery Mode many decades to finally malfunction. Maybe the long time of flawless working had to do with the spare energy coming from the Emeralds Shadow and Omega himself carried around with them. Anyway, if Eggman looked at his creation from the heaven, or hell, or wherever he was at the point, he could be proud of himself.

Shadow wasn't, and the district that happened to be nearby when Omega suddenly died could feel his ultimate wrath. Chilling a bit, he decided his solitude was just a matter of time and he shouldn't really care so much about it. Calming down fully, he admitted he did care after all, but there was nothing he could do to bring Omega back and stop being alone.

After maybe a month he thought that trying to do at least _something_ to fix the inanimate robot couldn't make things worse. At least that should have been easier than bringing a dead human back to life.

He knew from Tails that the Chaos Emeralds could act as a power source for still-working machines, but waving a gem in front of a broken one resulted in nothing. So, Shadow had to decline his natural abilities and resort to something he was totally unfamiliar with; mechanics.

All he had to do was understand the way of thinking of man who was a genius with an IQ of 300 and a doctorate in the sciences. Pretty tricky task, given that Shadow himself didn't have any degrees.

And wasn't any good at science.

In fact, he couldn't even read at the time he started his quest. Because in Gerald Robotnik's view, being the Ultimate Life Form meant being immortal and ultimately enduring and resistant to a certain incurable illness, not having ultimate brains.

On the other hand, Tails, an ordinary fox, had learnt enough to compete with Eggman in robotics on equal terms by the age of eight. Shadow, being an adult already and not having to waste time on sleep or eating, was positive it'd take him less to absorb the same amount of knowledge. Perhaps… a year?

There were blueprints on the remaining Eggman's bases, assembly stocks left from the G.U.N., school and university libraries left from the humans to help him with the basics. He had all resources to become a genius himself.

Soon enough, he realized how wrong he was.

He thought the alphabet was the most difficult part, but that was before he took up mathematics, and then physics. By no means a born student, Shadow felt as if trying to push a diamond drill up his spinal cord and into his brain. He would try to concentrate on the text hard, give up, let his attention slip, and then–

Shadow called them visitors to himself. He had never touched any psychiatry books yet, but he had no doubts they contained a diagnosis fit for his case.

Maria. Even long dead, she was still dear to him. Rouge, resting after her missions or planning her next treasure hunt. Sometimes Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy Rose. Gerald's monotone voice in the next room. Sunshine beyond the windows.

It was hard to admit he actually missed the world he had lost.

He cursed his weakness after every visit, but save for a dead robot, his reality had nothing to cling to. Was he supposed to wait for his death from the Chaos energy overdose? Or for some entities from the echidnas' _another place_ to come asking what happened to their Master Emerald?

…Somehow Shadow didn't want these people, and especially Maria, to see Omega in such state, or find themselves in a dark underground shooting range. So he spent most of his time outside or at the chosen school reading books from the library, only coming back to make sure nothing happened to Omega while he was gone. Fires still occurred in the ruins of Central City, and some of them could reach their shelter one day. Although the hedgehog had done everything to make sure his friend's state didn't turn worse; time stood still within the Emerald circle, guarding the metal from corrosion.

That was the best he could do for now.

Shadow closed his eyes tiredly. Sleep wasn't something the Ultimate Life Form could afford. He wasn't created to rest unless severely injured; he was created to serve the science. Listening to the silence idly for about an hour sounded like a deal in his case. But no more that that. If he stayed motionless and quiet for too long, he'd lose his mind... a bit. Maybe.

Then he would go to the school again like any fair student would.

If he concentrated on his book hard, he would find out more about electricity and make a tiny step towards understanding the blueprints. If he just stared at the text thoughtlessly, he would see the sunny world again… ask Maria to read him some. Or finally find the heart to enter Gerald's study and ask for help. The explanations for advanced robotics weren't in his head, and he doubted the visitors had other sources of information save for his mind, but who knew? Miracles had happened in this world before.

He would find it out in an hour.


End file.
